Page 33 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

The fishing cabin finally came into view through a break in the spruce—small, weathered, smokeless, a structure that looked like it had been built to be forgotten about for most of the year. The lake was frozen and smooth, visible beyond it.

Hudson slowed, scanning the approach. The man she’d spent the last hour laughing with disappeared somewhere behind his eyes.

“Did you ever think you’d come back here?” she asked. “Aurora Cove. Any of it.”

Hudson looked ahead for a second too long, avoiding eye contact. “No.”

Just that. No elaboration or softening, nothing that invited a follow-up question. But there was something underneath the word that didn’t sit flush with it—a gap between what he’d said and what she suspected was actually true.

She let it go. For now.

They rode the last stretch toward the cabin in silence, and the morning’s ease folded itself away somewhere behind them, replaced by the more familiar weight of the job.

Which was probably for the best.

Sarah wasn’t entirely sure she would’ve remembered to keep her distance if it had remained.

13

Hudson swung down from the saddle and stood for a second, letting his gaze travel along the ridgeline. Nothing moved, but a feeling lingered anyway.

“Hudson?”

He turned. Sarah was waiting for him at the cabin door, her cheeks pink from the cold.

Aside from their own tracks, the snow around the cabin was undisturbed. No vehicle was concealed behind the woodshed. Nothing moved. His body relaxed exactly one percent.

He joined her and ducked inside. The cabin was one room. Compact kitchenette. A jar of coffee and powdered creamer on the counter. Single bed. An armchair angled toward the lake.

Someone had pinned photographs above the kitchen counter. Fish. More fish. One of Nora holding up a trout nearly as long as her arm, laughing so hard the photograph had caught her with her eyes closed.

Hudson touched the edge of the photograph. She looked happy.

He opened the stove door and pressed two fingers to the ashes. Cold. He exhaled and turned, facing the bunk neatly made with green wool blankets. No blood or signs of struggle. No sign Cord had left in a hurry or unwillingly.

Just gone. Same as everywhere else.

“Anything?” Sarah asked, breath fogging in the cold that had followed them in.

“Notebook. A photograph.” He held up the small leather-bound thing he’d found tucked under the mattress, the photograph slipped inside its back cover like a man hiding something precious in the one place he thought no one would look. Nora again, smiling at the camera, captured in a moment that had nothing to do with lies or false names. “He’s been here recently.” He slipped the photograph carefully back into the notebook.

“But he’s not here now.” Sarah paced the cabin, her flashlight beam glancing off the walls and exposed rafters.

“No.” He turned the notebook over and flicked through it.

Wednesday 0540

Thursday 0330

Friday 2210

“What is it?”

Hudson blew out a breath. “Lists. Times. Distances. Somebody keeping track of something?”

He closed it. “Without context, it could mean anything.”

All this way. And at the end of it, a cabin that held nothing except proof a man had once been happy before his old life caught up with him.